Suicide rates in 2020 were higher than the previous year. They signify that depression is a real thing.
10th October was World Mental Health day, a day to create awareness around the topic which is still taboo or lesser talked about. Ironically, on the same day, the video of cricketing legend Kapil Dev surfaced stating that he doesn’t understand the terms like “pressure” or “depression” and all these words are “west imported” terms.
Context
The world cup winning captain was speaking at the “Champions of Aakash 2022” event addressing the students and many other personalities. Here he spoke that when the cricketers say that there is a lot of pressure playing in the IPL, he doesn’t get them.
https://twitter.com/Aces_sports/status/1578765134784258048?s=20&t=E_DhgJWP8YGZLrGxXsnESg
When he was young and wanted to play, the only thing he had was “passion”. There could only be one thing, either pressure or passion.
He further went on to say that high school kids complaining about pressure is laughable. “Parents give hefty fees, they study in AC buildings and yet they complain about pressure.”
Depression: Not just a “fancy term”
When someone like Kapil Dev, who has played the sport which millions follow and that too in a country that treats it as religion, says that there is nothing like pressure, it feels absurd. A decade ago, nobody used to even talked about mental health. It took a lot of time to raise awareness around this.
A couple of years back, when covid halted everything, people realized how confined they had become, many were alone, and had nobody to talk to. Suicide rates in 2020 were higher than the previous year. They signify that depression is a real thing and the environment affected it even further.
Cricketers, especially Indian cricketers are always under scrutiny by fans. Billion people change their opinions on cricketers with every match. Be it, Tendulkar, Yuvraj or modern great Kohli, they haven’t spared anyone. It’ll be naive to think that all this didn’t affect the cricketers and their performance.
Glen Maxwell was one of the first players to openly talk about depression and taking a break from cricket. He said that it was so bad that he was hoping his arm to get “broken” so that he could be away from the game.
Virat Kohli discussed feeling low for the last few months where he didn’t want to even hold the bat and he wasn’t enjoying what he was doing. Recently retired, Robin Uthappa talked about how he felt low mentally in 2009 and was in depression having suicidal thoughts during IPL season.
Being a cricketer among 1.2 bn isn’t as easy as it seems. There are a hundred others waiting for their chances to replace them. How can one expect them to not feel pressure in this competitive environment?
Student life: Not that easy
1983 world cup winner also went on to say that he doesn’t get why do children feel pressure in schools when their parents send them to AC school, give a lot of fees and teachers can’t even touch them. This comment by the legendary cricketer just shows the generation gap.
India is a country where everything is judged, be it students’ subject choices, career choices and even life choices. They are failures if they didn’t get great marks, they need to take science. There are only two career choices according to the parents, doctor or engineer.
For 10000 IIT seats, there are more than 2,00,000 students giving the exam of IIT JEE. Thousands of them get enrolled in coaching centres in Kota. Due to the expectations of parents, many of the students aren’t even able to speak for themselves leading to the deterioration of mental health. To think all this doesn’t lead to pressure or depression is sheer ignorance. One can only convert it to passion if s/he feels less burdened.
Conclusion
The older generation was more of the thought of being tough, “men don’t cry” and keep their emotions to themselves kind, while the younger generation has learnt that it’s okay to be vulnerable sometimes and one should let the emotions flow once in a while.
Depression isn’t just a western word. Rather it is a real thing and shouldn’t be taken lightly. When on one side we are still raising awareness about mental health, these types of comments by someone of Kapil Dev’s stature are disheartening. We hope and wish that people will still keep on learning and being a little kind and sensitive to these issues.
